The use of note acceptors in association with various vending machines for goods and services is now well known. Specifically, a note acceptor may be associated with a vending machine or gaming machine such that the deposit of currency into the validator results in an authorization for the vending of goods and/or services from the vending machine or gaming machine. Note acceptors must be serviced periodically to retrieve the currency received thereby, and to assure that a full complement of change is available for return to customers.
Typically, service personnel access the note acceptor and retrieve the currency received therein by simply removing the cash box or stacker full of bills and replacing it with an empty one. At the same time, necessary change may be deposited into the note acceptor. The full cash box cassette is then returned to a service area where the money is removed and counted. However, such a process is given to temptation of theft, since inaccuracies in the amount actually received by the note acceptor and that retrieved from the stacker are difficult of make. Moreover, information concerning the operational history of the associated note acceptor is typically not available, apart from a manual count of the money received. Information respecting the experience of a currency validator with respect to jams, attempts at illegal retrieval or "stringing," or the number of rejections of paper tendered as valid currency remain unknown, but of interest.
In the prior art, it has been known to provide an apparatus and technique for generally associating a currency stacker with a particular currency validator in the context of a note acceptor, such that a count of money received, as well as other operating parameters, can be determined at the time of service by monitoring a memory chip maintained in the note stacker. However, it has been found that such memory chips are given to failure because of static charges which may strike them during transportation. Typically, many such memory chips are insulated from electrical shocks up to 11,000 volts, while the static charges generated from the carpet often reach levels of 22,000 volts or more. Charges of this amplitude can either destroy the data maintained within the memory chip, or destroy the memory chip itself. Since it is most desirable that the note stackers be transported in an environment necessarily conducive to the existence of static charges, there is a need in the art for a structure which assures that the memory chip maintained by the note stacker is properly grounded during times of transport, and only removed from the electrical ground for data transmission when maintained in the currency validator itself, or at an appropriate docking station where the memory is to be read.